Much critical work on The Massacre of Paris has focused on its textual deficiencies, but such approaches have masked its effectiveness in rendering what is nearly unrepresentable: the trauma of its central event. It is not necessary to clear Massacre from all taint of incompleteness, compression, mis-remembering and interpolations to appreciate its brutal effectiveness in representing horror on the stage and its intense demands upon the kinesic intelligence of the players. The highly complex stagecraft of the play—evident in the frenetic pace suggested by the stage directions, the demands for rapid action, the complex use of space, and the soundscape of play—makes significant physical demands on the actors, exploiting their skills and the sensorium of the theatre to convey the full horror and shock of the massacre. Of particular note is Marlowe’s manipulation of temporality to create an effect of simultaneous compression and protraction. The soundscape of the play and its representation of entrapment are crucial mechanisms for achieving these effects.